A report from Northern Virginia Magazine. "The housing inventory in Northern Virginia was up almost 50 percent in June from the same time last year, according to the Northern Virginia Association of Realtors. And Molly Craig, a Realtor with Century 21 New Millennium, says she’s been having some hard conversations with home sellers in the area. For so many sellers, Craig says, the COVID-19 pandemic formed a baseline real estate market expectation. Craig says, 'People were parachuting in to write offers. We were getting 15, 20, 25 offers [per property] with no contingencies. … It was just a really terrible time to be a buyer.' She has to regularly talk sellers down who think it’s still going to be that way, but the NoVA real estate market has changed. 'In my day-to-day, in certain neighborhoods, houses that would have three or four years ago sold for, you know, $1 million, $1.2 million, are now not. … There’s less competition, less escalation.'"

"One big thing that’s changed in recent years is the rise in interest rates. She says that situation has even locked her in personally. 'My interest rate is so low that, if I downsize, my mortgage payment would be higher. And that’s most of Northern Virginia right now. So it’s created this logjam where people would have downsized and aren’t. They’re just waiting, and now they don’t want to sell because they’re not going to get that escalated price they would have a couple years ago.' 'The biggest killer for us is job uncertainty,' Craig says. 'Even government jobs, which were the gold standard, are no longer rock solid.' Craig acknowledges that sometimes people have to sell homes because of an estate sale, divorce, relocation, or other factors. But she advises, 'Unless you have to sell now, don’t.'"

Fox Baltimore in Maryland. "The city's real estate market is facing a significant downturn, with many homes remaining unsold. In some neighborhoods, crime has deterred potential buyers. A Curtis Bay homeowner had intended to sell her home until a real estate agent came to visit. 'She was coming out of the house and goes what's that, I said drug dealers, and she said there's no way somebody's going to buy a house here,' the homeowner said. In South Baltimore, the combination of high taxes and crime has left some homeowners feeling hopeless. One resident expressed frustration, saying, 'None of my family will come down here.' Another added, 'Sometimes I'm just ready to walk away from here.'"

The Seattle Times in Washington. "Waterfront condo sales are sluggish and prices are down. Nearly a third of waterfront office space is vacant, according to an analysis of the corridor between the water and First Avenue that runs from South King Street to Myrtle Edwards Park by real estate data firm CoStar. 'We’re at zero percent occupancy,' says developer Greg Smith about The Jack, a seven-story mixed-use office building his company, Urban Visions, finished in late 2023 at the corner of Alaskan Way and South Jackson Street. Real estate insiders like Smith blame that sluggishness on the same factors that have hamstrung the entire downtown property market — notably, remote work, high interest rates and ongoing concerns about public safety. Just last month, a man in a wheelchair was hospitalized after being shot not far from the ferry terminal."

"Office vacancy in the waterfront corridor is now at 30.5%, or just a point lower than in the downtown core, according to CoStar. In the condo market, hesitation by buyers has swelled inventory and forced some sellers to cut prices, sometimes substantially. That has been a disappointment for condo owners who, as part of the waterfront project’s local improvement district, faced an assessment to help fund the project. 'One of the things that was used to justify the local improvement district … was that the value of our waterfront properties was going to increase,' says Jim Wagonfeld, who lives with his wife, Judy, in the condo on Alaskan Way they bought in 1999. As it happened, the assessed value of the Wagonfelds’ condo, after climbing in recent years, has fallen by more than $200,000, or 14%, since 2019, according to King County records. Most of the other condo units in the Wagonfelds’ building have also lost value, as have many commercial properties in and around the waterfront. Some waterfront property owners blame those declines at least partly on local issues, such as street noise; an energetic individual some refer to as 'Bongo Man' often serenades the new waterfront late into the night, some condo owners say."

The San Francisco Examiner in California. "How is San Francisco’s housing market doing? Well, things look a lot different depending on whether you’re renting or buying. San Francisco home prices have dipped somewhat in recent months, with typical home values standing at just below $1.3 million at the end of June, according to Zillow. The past 10 years have been a volatile time for San Francisco’s housing market. Years of steady price increases gave way to a sudden surge in home values in 2021. But after home values reached their peak in 2022 — $1.7 million, according to Zillow’s home-value index — prices began falling back down just as quickly as they had climbed, a market reversal that came as mortgage rates started climbing back up once again. Since 2023, the market has been largely stagnant, with Zillow’s home-value index hovering just above $1.4 million for the most part. That's about the same level the market was at in 2018."

"Jordan Levine, chief economist at the California Association of Realtors suggested, perhaps the market is simply in a cooling off period, following the massive glut of sales in 2021 and 2022 that has 'front loaded' the market. In other words, many of the people who would otherwise want to buy now already did so three years ago. The report found that in The City mortgage costs were 191% higher than rental costs — the highest differential of any city in the nation, though San Jose was not far behind. Zillow Senior Economist Kara Ng said the contrast between the rental market and the home-buying market is 'a reflection of how tough the affordability math has become for buyers.' 'With mortgage rates as high as they are, the monthly cost of owning a home often far exceeds the cost of renting a similar one,' Ng said."

The Financial Post. "One last gasp for the Canadian residential market. That was the headline on the last story I wrote for the Financial Post nearly eight years ago. 'The housing market was a little more gaspy,' Phil Soper, chief executive of Royal LePage, one of the country’s largest residential brokerages, joked in an interview. Soper gave me some credit: 'You were right, the market got hammered,' he said. If you bought at the top, you have serious issues to consider, especially if you purchased a pre-construction unit and cannot get financing because you have no equity or negative equity. John Andrew, a retired Queen’s University professor, has a family friend whose daughter is in that exact scenario. 'She has a little bit of buyer’s remorse in the sense of, ‘What have I done?’ said Andrew, who ran regular real estate seminars for some of the country’s top executives for years, about a 2023 purchase."

CTV News in Canada. "Just 54 of the 407 residential properties involved in a major real estate bankruptcy process in northern Ontario still have to be sold. That’s the latest update from KSV Restructuring, the firm monitoring the insolvency proceedings of the firms involved under the Companies’ Creditors Arrangement Act (CCAA). Of the remaining properties, 26 are in Sault Ste. Marie, 21 are in Timmins, four are in Sudbury and three are in other communities in the north. The original insolvency involved a group of 11 companies with names like ‘Happy Gilmore Incorporated’ and ‘The Pink Flamingo,’ whose accumulated debts were initially reported as $144 million, but were reassessed by KSV at just more than $90 million. The companies owned 631 residential units in 407 properties, mainly across northern Ontario, some with and without tenants on leases."

"Their business model was to buy distressed properties, renovate them and then rent them out at a profit. However, it emerged during the CCAA process that the owners took part in many questionable practices leading up to the insolvency declaration in January 2024. That included purchases of luxury items, trips and payments of large dividends when the companies weren’t profitable. Some properties used as security for loans already had existing mortgages on them. Secured creditors -- mostly investors holding first mortgages -- took ownership of 323 of the properties in late 2024, with the remaining ‘liquidation portfolio properties’ to be sold on the open market. In the last few months, 32 of those properties have been liquidated, bringing the remaining to be sold down to 54, representing a total of 80 units. Out of the total, 39 of the units are unoccupied. To avoid flooding the market, new listings are added as others are sold."

From BBC News in the UK. "A woman who is struggling to sell her flat because of the lack of a fire safety certificate, has said she cannot afford to continue living there. Sharon Naidoo, 65, wants to move out of Camberley, Surrey, to live with family in Bracknell but says potential buyers for her property in Southwell Park Road are struggling to get a mortgage. Remediation works on three apartment blocks at The Courtyard to bring them up to safety standards are expected to start in the autumn of next year. Ms Naidoo told BBC Radio Surrey that Crest Nicholson was providing lenders with a 'letter of comfort' which outlines the company's commitment to making the development safe, but a number of lenders are still not willing to offer mortgages to buyers. She said the planned works are not happening soon enough to help her situation and believes they will continue for a couple more years."

"'I thought I would be able to get the cash for my flat and go and live where I wanted to - to retire - and I can't do that,' she said. 'And I can't wait until 2027 because I can't afford to live here now, so I don't know where I'm supposed to find the money. I don't have the money to keep paying the bills and to live here… and I can't sell it, so I can't win… I don't know what I'm supposed to do.' Ms Naidoo said she is having to choose whether to pay bills, including service charges, or buy food."

From The Macao News. "Mainland buyers are driving a surge in Hong Kong’s ultra-luxury property sales, accounting for 80 percent of transactions worth HK$300 million (US$38.2 million) or more over the past 19 months, the South China Morning Post reports – citing figures from property consultancy Savills. More than half were first-hand sales (purchased directly from developers), while the rest involved financially distressed sellers – including five in receivership. According to Savills’ head of residential sales Thomas See, most of the secondary sellers’ struggles related to their investments in Hong Kong’s property market. For example, a stand-alone townhouse at 28 Peak Road in October 2024, which sold for HK$1.05 billion (US$133.8 million) in October to Zhansheng Network Technology, was mortgagee stock belonging to a family involved in real estate development. The wife of the co-founder of Chinese selfie app Meitu, meanwhile, paid HK$465.8 million (US$59.3 million) for a home in Jardine’s Lookout – a sum 22 percent under its HK$600 million (US$76.4 million) asking price."